On tangled paths
By: Theodor Fontane ; translated by Peter James Bowman
Contributors: Bowman, Peter James
Series: Penguin classics; Penguin classics
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9780141392172
Subjects: Social conditions; Social classes; Fiction; History
Description: In 1870s Berlin, an aristocratic officer in a glamorous cavalry regiment and a seamstress supporting herself and her invalid foster-mother with piecework, defy convention by falling in love. What might have been a simple tale of conflict between love and duty becomes, in Fontane's hands, something more sophisticated. The contrast between the lovers' whole-hearted view of each other and the world's trivializing view of their relationship underlies a tautly sprung narrative which is tenderly moving without being sentimental; gently ironic and full of social comedy. Fontane's brilliant use of dialogue creates a vigorous and loving portrait of the new German capital and its inhabitants. ""The immense pleasures of the novel lie in the author's cool-headed approach to what, in other hands, could have been a forgettable melodrama. . . . The book is filled with comparable moments of small facts transfigured into something magical.""-The New Yorker March 7, 2011 As much a psychological as a social realist, the author is interested in the emotional conflicts that arise between individual desire and social conditioning, class expectations and personality.
Notes: Translated from the German.